Islamic State recruit Amin Mohamed jailed in Victoria
A wannabe terrorist stopped from fighting alongside Islamic State in war-torn Syria wouldn’t have lasted long on the front line, a Victorian Supreme Court judge has told him.
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A wannabe terrorist stopped from fighting alongside Islamic Sate in war-torn Syria wouldn’t have lasted long on the front line, a Supreme Court judge has told him.
Melbourne man Amin Mohamed, 26, was this morning jailed for planning to take up arms alongside others in the hope of achieving “martyrdom” in the bloodthirsty conflict.
In sentencing the Ethiopian-born New Zealand national, Justice Lex Lasry told the reformed Islamic extremist he would’ve had little hope of surviving if he’d been successful in travelling to the Middle Eastern nation.
“While you were obviously willingly involved you did not declare any more specific intention, I do not think you would’ve last long.
“You do not seem to have any previous experienced that would have equipped for what you apparently wanted to do.
“That may be a clear indicator of how misguided your state of mind was at the time,” Justice Lasry said during his lengthy sentencing remarks.
The wannabe foreign fighter was sentenced to five-and-half years behind bars, with a non-parole period of three-and-a-half years, after a jury found him guilty of three acts preparatory to engaging in hostilities overseas.
At the earliest, Mohamed could be out in July next year after being held in custody since January, 2014, and will likely be deported to New Zealand, where he lived since he was eight years old.
Mohamed arranged to cross into Syria from Turkey with the help of a local contact given to him by ISIS recruiter Hamdi Al Qudsi.
Al Qudsi was last month sentenced to six years in jail by a NSW court.
On September 19, 2013 — the same day his passport was cancelled — Mohamed booked flights from Singapore to Istanbul via Doha.
The next day he arranged flights from Sydney to Brisbane and then onto Singapore, and boarded a flight from Melbourne Airport to Sydney, after being given notice by Al Qudsi to not meet up with him.
He made the trip to Brisbane on September 21.
Australian customs services then reacted to an alert attached to his record, halting Mohamed from checking in to his international flight at Brisbane Airport.
Mohamed’s lies to New Zealand authorities began on September 6 when making an application for a New Zealand passport, telling the passport office his previous one had been lost.
After his original travel plans were denied by authorities he told the passport office his fiance was awaiting his arrival in Denmark, where she would buy a ticket for him to make the connecting flight to reach her once he landed in Turkey.
Mohamed has since described his attitude as “naive and foolish at that time.”
Justice Lasry said that while he accepted Mohamed was a changed person, “I cannot be satisfied, even on the balance of probabilities, that you have fully renounced the religiously motivated desire of going to Syria to engage in hostile activities in that country.”